According to local Japanese news, a man has been arrested in Tokyo for selling modified copies of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The 27-year old was reportedly selling a version of the popular game with the “ultimate save data”, as he would tailor the in-game stats, abilities and items to suit the purchaser's demands.
However, the act of tampering with the game’s files for profit is in violation of Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention Law, a breach which the individual has admitted to following his arrest two days ago.
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According to the Broadcasting System of Niigata, the Chinese national admits to illegally falsifying and selling data from Breath of the Wild, and has made 10 million yen (about $90,700 USD) from similar acts since December 2019. Copies of the game with this “ultimate” Breath of the Wild save were going for 3500 yen ($31 USD) before the authorities intervened.
In these ultimate save files, the modder would alter the abilities to suit the buyer, and also make rare items much easier to obtain. While this might sound like the average thing you’d stumble across on NexusMods, modding games actually became illegal in Japan in 2019. The violation in this case was “providing services to circumvent the technical restrictions” of the Switch.
Commenting on the case, a spokesperson from the cybercrime countermeasures division of the Niigata Prefectural Police said: “Modification of save data should not be done in violation [of the law], and I would like to ask [the public] not to purchase the data.”
Nintendo is of course notoriously protective over its IPs, and this isn’t the first time the law has gotten involved. Back in February, another man was arrested in Japan for modifying and selling a Sobble in Pokemon Sword and Shield. Even in countries where Nintendo can’t rely on arrests to deal with hackers, it’s still trying to stamp them out. In January, the company issued a warning to online cheaters in Pokemon, stating that it would ban them from Sword and Sheild, as well as Pokemon Home.
Source: Sora News 24
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